High infant mortality, low life expectancy, soaring health-care costs — the symptoms are numerous and the diagnosis unmistakable: America's health-care system is ailing. But like a patient who coughs or limps his way through an illness, the U.S. has often been reluctant to look for help.

The Frederiksberg University Hospital in Copenhagen looks like any other hospital in the developed world, except for one notable absence: there are no clipboards. Instead, doctors and nurses carry wireless handheld computers to call up the medical records of each patient, including their prescription history and drug allergies. If a doctor prescribes a medication that may cause complications, the computer's alarm goes off.